A retrospective of creative works (Part 1)
So, recently I've been going on about creative frustrations, and I've been trying to get to the route of them; while trying to break through on my stories by brute forcing them. Which... doesn't work all the time. The main problem is hard to explain. The best way that I could describe it is that there are some general "things that I want to say" and "feelings that I want to communicate" that only seem to have a vague detachment to ideas. What I want to figure out the most is what separates things like Young Commando or Hellspawn or that recent time travel story I posted that I've abandoned. These are things that I haven't had the urge to go back to. I've wanted to finish them or continue them, but I never could find the... urge/desire to. Meanwhile, no matter what the adversity was, I was able and am able to keep continuing on Growing Around. What separates the two of them in my head? It's something that I legitimately want to know, and am having a hard time figuring it out. The only thing that I've come to the conclusion of is that an interesting idea is great, but despite popular belief, it cannot be the sole thing that drives a project to completion. They are necessary, but not the only thing that's necessary. So, what I'm looking for is for someone to tell me the themes and the motifs that show up again and again in my creative work. Not just the plots and common tropes, but what they think that I'm trying to communicate beyond the actual text. I'll give a brief synopsis of everything that I remember writing/creating; what I remember them; why I abandoned them, etc. So, we're gonna have a bit of a retrospective as you hopefully join me as I walk down memory lane. Metamorphosis (2006-2007): This was a series of novellas that I wrote in middle school. I remember them being really inspired by the Goosebumps series of books. I was extremely in to them at the time, and the entire series was essentially sparked by the end of the book "The Girl Who Cried Monster" to the point where the main character's name was Lucy. Lucy Nidhogg (I was also into Age of Mythology apparently). The main plot of "The Girl Who Cried Monster" was that she thought that her librarian was a monster because he ate bugs and was weird. At the end of the book it was revealed that the girl and her family were actually the real monsters. Spoilers, by the way. In the book series, I changed it so that it was about a fifth grade girl slowly turning into a monster. I gave its species a weird name that I don't remember and can't pronounce, but it was basically a reptilian thing with scales and fangs and claws. People back then liked it, and it is one of the things that I finished. Like... really finished it. The original series had six volumes, each having anywhere from 6,000 to 11,000 words, and they dealt with not only Lucy trying to be accepted, despite her primal urges (like she actually had a lust for blood, but didn't want to be seen as the monster she had become), but it had other supernatural things like a board game that was the fantasy equivalent of Jumanji, a body swap, a living doll that wanted to play sadistic games, and well... Mr. Flash, the school's mythology teacher. I remember this guy because everyone who read the stories remember him. I don't know the thought process behind this, but he regaled his class with random stories, such as him having a collection of stuffed squirrels or that he had a mashed potato statue of his grandmother in his basement. Why? No reason. Also, he was the henchman of an evil cyborg named Mr. Roboto, who posed as the school's science teacher, in an attempt to hypnotize all of the school's kids. The novellas were weird as all hell. I rewrote this story at several points, but I no longer have the copies of the originals, although it's rumored that they still exist with some. I may try to rewrite this at some point in the future, because it's only the execution that has the problem. It suffers from "I made this in middle school syndrome", complete with being all too derivative of what I enjoyed at the time. The details of the story are quite frankly... bizarre. I used to have a "lol random" style of humor, that I guess I eventually grew out of. And yes, I know the title is the same thing as the old story about the guy who turns into a cockroach for no reason. Twin kids story (2007, winter): 'At some point, I must have gotten bored of writing the adventures of ''Lucy Nidhogg. It stared twins - a boy named Xavier and a girl named Sari, both in fifth grade. (I was in eighth grade when I wrote both of these by the way). Here's the thing: Sari has psychic powers, Xavier doesn't. The story is actually about a bounty hunter who hunts and kills kids chasing them down through what felt like repository of half-formed ideas. It was... incredibly episodic. What was a full volume in Metamorphosis was only a chapter or two here. But they were fantasical ideas. Some of them were inspired by Goosebumps. I remember the two of them going to a summer camp or two, although a lot of them weren't. In one chapter Sari made a wish (I think) that she could be the teacher of the school, and boom kids were teaching parents for like one chapter. I don't remember much of this story because no copies exist and like I said, it was a culmination of a million little ideas that probably found themselves elsewhere. It was also finished, but I think that's largely because people were reading what I was writing; at least my friends were, and a demand mattered, I suppose. '''Pickles (2007. Summer, I think?): So, I had drawn some comics that I no longer have. They followed this cartoon character called "Pickles", his sister "Pickella" and his baby brother... um "Baby Pickles." And their last name was "Pickel" because I couldn't be bothered to figure out the proper spelling of the word "pickles", so I made one the first name and one the last name. It's only luck that I got it right. And the parents never showed up because they didn't have any parents, I guess. The character designs and the drawings are pretty bad. So, the male "Pickles" characters were basically an elongated Marill. You know, pickle shaped, complete with a tail. Pickles himself, being the quirky guy he was, had his tail bent out of shape, and the tail ended with a circle. He was purple, but the tail was blue. It was a thing, everyone had a different tail color. I gave him some shoes, but no legs; just drew shoe shapes at the bottom. I also gave him a SpongeBob nose, a belt, and long, floppy dog ears. Also, his arms were just stick arms with three prongs. His sister was designed a little bit different. She was in a dress, so her head was just a circle with smaller features (a little bump for a nose). The shoulders of the dress were basically puff ball clouds, and her tail ended in a heart, as did all of the female "Pickles" characters. She was the smarter, down-to-earth one. Compared to Pickles, who... didn't have much of a personality. He was more of an "everyman" kind of guy. And "Baby Pickles" was easily excitable. The art, as you can imagine, wasn't good. My drawing art today is not very good. You can imagine how it was like a decade ago (fuck, it's been a decade before I started high school). So, what were the stories? Well, the first story was about Pickella starting a pet sitting service and getting surprised when she found out that she'd be pet sitting a monkey. And yeah, I do reuse a lot of the ideas that I used when I was younger, but I think most creators do that, especially as we get the means to execute them better and better. The second episode was about Pickles getting a hat. You see, he had a sunburn so bad... his head caught on fire. So, he stole Pickella's savings and went to buy a bunch of hats. One of them was a beanie hat. The wind swept him up (with the propeller and everything) and he ended up crashing into a plane. Eventually the hat maker ran out of hats to give Pickles, so he gave him his own fancy top hat. This gets Pickles beat up off screen to the point where he can't see because the hat was really cool and fancy apparently, enough to get him mugged. In the meantime, Pickella notices that her savings are stolen, beats up the hat owner and locks him in a closet (I don't know why). Then she disguises herself as the hat seller (which is... not possible because the male and female characters had entirely different body compositions to the point where they could be different species). But Pickles couldn't see who she really was because of the black eyes. Anyway, she gives him a ski mask, which promptly gets Pickles arrested. The end. The third episode was about Pickles telling a story to Baby Pickles. It was a simple story - "Princess Pickella" had ended up being kidnapped and used as a doll by a giant little girl. She eventually ran into the knight Pickles. I don't remember the specific story here, but it basically turned out to be a ploy to keep everyone up so late that they ended up sleeping through the school bus the next morning. Pickella would come in and keep complaining about it. Pickles plan worked. Going back through the stories, I do like their dynamic. It definitely was interesting. The fourth, and final episode was about two men-in-black agent guys going to Pickella. They had her make a shrink ray. It was used on Baby Pickles, and it turned him into a giant destroying the city. I don't remember how it ended, but it was the last issue. My cousins and other relatives originally liked (or at least told me they liked) the original few volumes, but as other people's interest dropped off, so did mine. Are you noticing a pattern yet? Epic: The Humorous RPG! (2012): (tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php…) I'm probably skipping a ton of stuff, although I don't remember much of it. My high school years were full of distractions. I had probably written something, but through life falling apart, it's kind of hard to remember. I know that I wrote this in 2012 because it was actually posted to the internet, with its date forever commemorated. I had discovered an RPG making freeware game engine called the OHRRPGCE awhile back, but I had never really finished anything. I was shit at pixel art, and terrifying of plotscripting (the engine's version of coding, which is... actually very easy to learn). Also, Final-Fantasy-based RPG's probably weren't the thing I wanted to design (platformers were much more appealing), but the thing is... this engine was really user-friendly. Game Maker is harder to use. Unity is harder to use. However, I had never finished anything with the engine. But, I remember that the engine had a monthly magazine called HamsterSpeak. It would give news about the (small) community, give tips and tricks to how to use the system, and give game reviews. And I had caught the penultimate issue. They announced that they were going on hiatus for at least 6 months (spoilers, they're still on hiatus). So the race was on. Could I develop an RPG maker game or demo from scratch in time for the final issue, and could it actually be good? You can see how that turned out here: link I value the experience much more than the actual end-product. Actually getting myself down to complete a project by a specific deadline, even if it was ultimately arbitrary was an experience that I carry with me to this very day. Or at the very least... I wish I could say that, but I haven't finished a creative project since the end of last October. Maybe this is one of the notes I should take from my old self. Like I feel like I "got done" a lot more in my youth. Keep in mind that everything up to this point has been done, and very rarely is that going to be the case after this. The problem is that... well, a lot of things. The first thing - if you're going to design a turn-based RPG, make sure you've played more than just Super Mario RPG. Especially if you're going to do a parody of RPG's. Now, I played a lot of RPG's growing up, but they were action RPG's - Terranigma ''& ''Soul Blazer; Morrowind, Fallout 3, Oblivion; Baldur's Gate, etc but not the kind that were represented here. And it shows. The game is horribly balanced. I decided to make the demo allow the player to grind to level 30 and keep unlocking new abilities. Alright, that's cool. But what's not cool is when you think/expect the player to stay in the same place and try to make battles match every level. And there were other bad design choices. The goldfish. Their valuable, but my younger self decided to make them take forever to kill (no challenge, just patience). And because the not-gold fish were apparently punishment, they took just as long and you couldn't run from them. Besides the optional fish, the only enemy the player runs into is various types of slimes in the forest. The big ones are able to kill you easily, and nothing else provides a challenge (except King Slime and the Wraith). Tougher enemies just... are bulkier. The only interesting fight in the entire game is King Slime, who spawns more slimes whenever you hit him; breaks into three giant slimes when you kill him (which further break down into three slimes when you kill those). It's the only game that actually involves some damn strategy (focus fire on one of the giant slimes' spawns before you kill another giant slime, and don't get overwhelmed). Of course, I know now that you need to give certain enemies status ailments; give them party dynamics; make them more unique. I mean, I tried. There are wuzzles. Hit them with fire, and they turn into a fire wuzzle. Hit them with water, and they turn into a water wuzzle. Hit them with melee and they die. The problem. The mage character is the slowest of your party, so people might never notice them. I think that most of Gallas' abilities aren't programmed right, and many of Kain's are useless... or overpowered (like lowering accuracy). I think this is why it was a mistake to make abilities to level 30... even though the game only goes up to the first level of the game. I ran out of ideas. With Lillith, basically the four elemental spells, and then stronger versions of the four elemental spells, and then an elemental spell that hits everyone. Then there are the save crystals. I don't know why these are here, except my younger self wanting to be a dick. I might have wanted to make this game difficult, but I don't remember that. I don't know why I did this. The idea came from Tomb Raider III, but the save crystals is literally the reason that I hate that game. It is the reason that I hate a game, and I put it in my game. Dungeon design is copying off of Zelda without any real understanding of Zelda (you come across some area where you can't walk through lava. Get some lava shoes, you can walk through lava). The humor in this game makes me want to smack my younger self. I mean, the plot is fine for parody, I guess. Gallas' mother wants him to be an adventurer hero, even though his father died by being an adventurer hero. So, I guess she dyed his hair blue and then she adopted him a sister and let her lose in the woods so he had someone to rescue. After a fucking maze forest, the girl - Lillith - wants to slay a dragon. On the way there, the two of them run into Kain - which was named such because every RPG has a Kain, yay - says that the hometown is doomed and the only way he can live is by going with the heroes. The humor in this game makes me want to smack my younger self in the face. One of the first jokes is that a chair attacks Gallas for a tutorial battle (in the tutorial, by the way, the attacks are random, so you get the instructions in a random order). Gallas says "who do I look like, Ness?" No, you fucking idiot, Ninten was the one who was attacked by an inanimate object; not Ness. There's an old man masturbating in a cave, blocking your way. And if you look in the files, the old man saying that he was masturbating is literally the first text box I wrote. I don't even like the joke that everyone seems to like. At one point you can try to force Gallas to walk onto lava. If you keep pushing him, he'll decide that you're too stupid to control him, take his life into his own hands, and walk off, leaving you with a game over. This would be great... unless the player hasn't saved recently, because they... you know couldn't. Every other joke in the game is "hurr de durr, dem RPG's, right?" However - I still remember the effort I put into this game. It's entirely palatable to me. You know that stupid save gem thing? Well, I was so proud of myself for learning how to code in a save command. The game didn't have a built-in feature for items to allow you to save. It was either save on a map, or don't save anywhere, unless you want to code. I was able to code cutscenes. I was proud of all of the little details I thought of - giving the player a quest menu, and have them actually change when a quest is complete. Fuck, I programmed side quests. Four of them. Sure, they were all derivative, but each of them was a trial that I remember overcoming. Finding places to put the hiding kids. Hiding the NPC's ring, and giving the player a surprise boss battle with a crab with stolen graphics. The wraith quest actually let the player make a choice - harder battle for more rewards or easier battle for less rewards. I remember just pouring so much content into this game. I figured out a simple way to let players fish and mine for collectables, and find random trinkets, or get punished by a fucking fish. I wouldn't just give players secret gems, I'd make gems of different types - red gems for finishing quest; blue gems from fishing; green gems from mining; white gems hidden in items; etc. Each gem would let you get a different reward from a guy called the Spiv. The Spiv was cool. You see, his gimmick was that he stole content that wasn't supposed to be the game, and me the designer was trying to stop him and squash him out, but he would give you this stuff if you found the secret gems. Even though if you got all of the red gems, you could make Brovania - my old handle - your party member. Honestly, the separate gem categories gave me more work... and it made the gems less valuable. Also, another dick move. You could buy revive crystals with yellow gems. Which were a rare drop... from a rare enemy. Like 1% drop from an enemy that appears 1% of the time. This was the only way in-game to revive yourself. I... could go on and on about this game. It gives me some mixed feelings, you know? I remember the passion and effort. But at the same time, the game is so awful I kind of have a vendetta against it. A video game vendetta, if you will. **** And this has been the first part of my walk down memory lane - my school days. Did I learn anything. Yeah, my school-aged self was a fucking weirdo. But what did you learn? Any common themes, or motifs? To be honest, what I've learned is... kind of saddening. I used to persevere and see these things to the end. Even if the quality was bad - bad art, confusing stories, nonsensical plotlines, or just being flat broken - all of these things were, on some level, complete. Next time we'll start up with Little Cassie, which is also complete, but less so. And honestly, I think that... this is the thing that I lost. Something that was there with me during my old... I guess Brovania-era days. I was constantly creative and always exploring fantasy; bringing things into the world. The way that I talked about these; I enjoyed what I did. I loved coming up with little details and showing off quirky characters. And other people seemed to like them too. I guess the biggest question is... what did I lose? Category:Miscellaneous